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A Short Biography on the Great Alfred Hitchcock.
Before
>
Alfred Hitchcock
(1899-1980) became famous for his typical >
Hitchcock
movie
stamp,
his first job in the film industry was as a designer of frontispieces for
'silent movies' in the studio's of Famous Players-Lasky in Islington, in 1919.
Four years later he became scenarist for director Graham Cutts, that's where
he examined his possibilities as art-director and cutter. In 1926 he married
script-girl Alma Reville (1900-1982), who closely collaborated with him all of
his career.
Also in 1926 Hitchcock directed his first
two of his total of 53 movies (52 have been saved, only his second one The
Mountain Eagle is lost). Until 1939 Hithcock worked in England; after that
he went to Hollywood, where he made all, except for 3, of his following
movies. During this period he also created his own specific style, the
characteristic > Hitchcock
movie
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| Publicity photo for a Hitchcock movie.
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The book-shelfs in the libraries are
bending from the numerous treatises on the art of Hitchcock, varying from
complicated Catholic theology to symbolic interpretations of the cameo
appearances of the director in his own films. Except for the excellent
interview with
>
Francois Truffaut
(French film critic and also director)
Hitchcock very rarely commented on his movies and his distinguishing Hitchcock
movie language. His contributions to interviews were mostly
straightforward, sometimes even banal.
Yet, Hitchcock's fifty-three movies represent a
surprising amount of themes and subjects. In his 'silent movie' period he was
a young man in love with the medium, determined to astonish with his renewals,
someone who still wasn't ready in making thrillers and who was happy with
every story he could get his hands on. Then, in the Thirties his English
suspense movies became successful. These movies varied from the German shadows
in Sabotage to the hilarious and fast paced murder mystery The Lady
Vanishes.
Hitchcock went to Hollywood because there he
had better technicians and actors at his disposal. In the Forties and Fifties
he continued to perfect his skills, until he delivered a series of five
masterpieces in a row, starting with The Wrong Man in 1956. These
films, the other four were Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho,
and The Birds, were not all well received but over the years with the
repeating exhibitions, nothing of the wealth, the intensity and the sympathy
for human weaknesses has been lost.
With his two following movies Torn Curtain
and Topaz he lost contact with his public and their expectations of a
typical Hitchcock movie. But Hitchcock recovered with Frenzy, the first
film that he directed since 1949, in his country of birth.
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Hitchcock's cameo in Frenzy (1972)
(Hitchcock with the black hat)
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Short before his death in 1980 he was
knighted. Looking back we can say he's one of the most influential visual
artists of the 20th Century and his film legacy an eternal inspiration for
filmmakers, now and in the future. His own recognizable style was a genre
within itself, the > Hitchcock movie,
that very seldomly dissapointed.
The Complete Hitchcock Movie List
(Most films include a mark out of ten rating
taken from the book 'The Complete Hitchcock' by Paul Condon and Jim
Sangster)
Always Tell Your Wife
(1922) (Uncredited)
Number 13
(1922)
The Pleasure Garden
(produced in 1925/ released in 1927)
The Mountain Eagle
(produced in 1925/ released in 1927)
The Lodger: A Story of the London
Fog (produced in 1926/ released in 1927) (7/10)
Downhill (1927)
Easy Virtue
(1927)
The Ring
(1927)
The Farmer's Wife
(1928)
Champagne
(1928)
The Manxman
(1929)
Blackmail
(1929) (7/10)
Elstree Calling
(1930) (Not really a Hitchcock movie but a collaborative work)
Juno and the Paycock
(1930) (4/10)
Murder!
(1930) (6/10)
The Skin Game
(1931) (3/10)
Number Seventeen
(1932) (2/10) (Definitely the worst Hitchcock movie!)
Rich and Strange
(1928) (4/10)
Waltzes from Vienna
(1933) (5/10)
The Man Who Knew too Much
(1934) (7/10)
The 39 Steps
(1935) (8/10)
Secret Agent
(1936) (7/10)
Sabotage (1936)
(7/10)
Young and Innocent
(1937) (7/10)
The Lady Vanishes
(1938) (7/10)
Jamaica Inn
(1939) (7/10)
Rebecca
(1940) (8/10)
Foreign Correspondent
(1940) (6/10)
Suspicion
(1941) (5/10)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
(1941) (5/10)
Saboteur
(1942) (7/10)
Shadow of a Doubt
(1942) (7/10) (Hitchcock's personal favorite!)
Lifeboat (1944)
(8/10)
Spellbound (1945)
(6/10)
Notorious (1946)
(8/10)
The Paradine Case
(1947) (4/10)
Rope (1948)
(6/10)
Under Capricorn
(1949) (3/10)
Stage Fright
(1950) (9/10)
Strangers on a Train
(1951) (8/10)
I Confess
(1953) (4/10)
Dial M for Murder
(1954) (8/10)
Rear Window
(1954) (10/10)
To Catch a Thief
(1955) (7/10)
The Trouble With Harry
(1955) (3/10)
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1956) (9/10)
The Wrong Man
(1956) (8/10)
Vertigo (1958)
(10/10) (Probably the most acclaimed Hitchcock movie!)
North by Northwest
(1959) (10/10)
Psycho
(1960) (8/10)
The Birds
(1963) (9/10)
Marnie (1964)
(8/10)
Torn Curtain
(1966) (7/10)
Topaz
(1969) (2/10)
Frenzy (1972)
(9/10)
Family Plot
(1976) (8/10)
The Short Night
(Unfinished)
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